The Second Sector
by darkNnerdy
Summary: In the United States 4 Sectors make up the now ravaged country. Walls divide societies and their wars within. Famine and disease are no longer a fear, but the reality of those left. It's within Sector Two, the southern portion of the USA, that those known as the Rebels fight back, trying desperately to survive against those that want them to lose. Dystopian Fic
1. Chapter 1

**I have the most amazing cheerleaders in this fandom. **

**Thank you, Ham, Satan, and Annie. **

**This fic is inspired by, and dedicated to, 3 women in this fandom who all have birthday's this month and who mean so much to me. **

**Abadkitty, Meatsuit, and Ab Knee.**

**Happy Birthday, Ladies. ILY **

**Summary: In the United States 4 Sectors make up the now ravaged country. Walls divide the societies and their wars within. Famine and disease are no longer a fear, but the reality of those left after the destruction and fall of most of mankind. It's within Sector Two, the southern portion of the USA, that the those known as the Rebels fight back. Trying desperately to survive. **

**The Second Sector **

Blood has always fascinated me. The color, when fresh, an almost blackish red. Thick like syrup and just as sticky. I wondered how it held us together, how it beat through our hearts.

I remember the first time I ever saw it. The first time it ever covered my hands.

Jasper had taken me hunting for the few animals that our sector freed once a month from the breeding mill. He was always the tough one, but he said I scared him, said I'd make a good hunter.

And I did. Still do.

My first animal was a cub. A small black bear that most girls my age would have adored. They'd want to hug it, maybe tie it to a tree and keep it as a pet. Not me. Animals mean food. A blanket for my bed, and bones for digging in the soil. It meant we stayed alive.

Together.

I remember our mother's scream the day we walked in with the cub. Its carcass dragging along the ground behind us, blood staining her old wooden floor. She was angry. So angry. Her face dotted red and her eyes wide. Not for the blood Jasper had smeared across my face, an honor, he claimed, but for letting him chop off my hair.

He'd taken one of dad's mirror shards and shaved it half off, leaving me with barely enough to braid on the side. I'd seen the style on many of the women in town, and even though Jasper knew our mother would beat his ass for it, he did it anyway.

The memories from that day will forever stay with me. The pride in my father's eyes. My mother's head in his lap, full belly and fast asleep as he read from his great great grandfather's journal. Jasper sitting next to me, his interest more in carving a new knife from the cub's bone, than our history.

Remembering that moment makes me smile as I slit the throat of the man I've trapped beneath me.

"I get what Jasper and Emmett meant now," Eric, the new kid, says as I wipe the blade across my jeans.

"What did they tell you?"

"Not to piss you off." He looks nervous as he fidgets with the small knife my brother gave him, but he isn't running and he hasn't pissed himself. Always good signs.

I agreed to bring him. To test his ability to hunt and survive. He'd been sheltered from the dangers that lurk around here, as much as one can be in our sector. For one, he lived within the city limits, never venturing out more than a block, always gripping his mother's hand, eyes to the ground. But she's no longer here to protect him, to promise him safety and keep him fed. That was our duty now.

Jasper likes the strays, and the moment he saw Eric and heard his story, we officially became the parents of another orphan. It wasn't purely out of the kindness in our hearts. We have our selfish reasons for collecting people, but we always give them an option to stay or go. Shelter from the world outside, and food as long they pull their weight.

We aren't completely unkind.

Eric ended up choosing the former. He needed us as much as we needed him. Being thirteen in this world isn't easy, but being alone is a far darker option than the one we laid on the table.

"I don't care for thieves, Eric," I say slowly, hoping he understands the meaning behind my words. "That deer was mine and he was an idiot for trying to kill me for it." I smile down at the man, his body cooling with death as his blood seeps into the earth below.

With any luck, he'll keep the monsters that lurk occupied for the night.

"So two lessons in one day?" Three, but I'll leave that one up to Jasper to explain.

"Yep." I sheath my knife into its leather pouch against my thigh, and check the man's pockets for anything valuable.

"What about him?"

"Well he's dead, so technically none of what he has belongs to him anymore." I shrug, putting his zippo and half a pack of cigarettes in my sack, along with an empty silver money clip from his pocket.

"Do we just leave him?"

I look up at Eric, still shuffling nervously and laugh. "Do you wanna give him a burial?"

"No."

"Then we leave him." I grab the cap off his head and place it on Eric's. "Now help me with the deer."

He grabs the back legs as I grab its rack. An eight pointer, enough to feed us for the week if we clean it properly and spare no meat. I look back at Eric and wonder if he's ever tasted real wild game, ever eaten the liver of an animal he had to skin with his bare hands. If he's really ever gotten his hands dirty, or relied on what little sources our Sector offers those with its markings.

As if reading my thoughts his eyes travel to the bare skin of my wrist.

"You don't…"

"But you do." It's not a question. It was the first thing I noticed about him. That fading black ink. A harsh reminder that he could be tracked. That we risked too much sometimes.

His screams from the night we took him in still echo within the walls of my mind, but they do not affect me. Not now.

"It's a requirement within the city fence. I was eight."

If I was Angela, I might actually cry for him. Sometimes I think it's too bad I'm not, but when I look back at the man growing smaller behind us, I'm glad I'm not.

"I won't apologize for what we had to do, Eric," I say when his eyes grow sad.

"I'd never ask you to."

"Good." I hoist the deer up higher, taking most of its weight off Eric's small frame, reminding me I'll need to speak with Jasper when we get back.

"I can help you know. With food and supplies."

"They'd ask too many questions, Eric. We went over this." I shake my head at him, and move a little quicker. I scan the forest around us, knowing that animals aren't the only things the sector lets out once a month.

"But I could," he tries harder, his voice more firm. "I look older than I am."

I sigh, shifting my weight and pulling on the deer to make him move faster.

"We get ours tomorrow, Eric. We'll be fine. I promise." I feel his shoulders sag as the deer becomes heavier against me and smile to myself.

"I just want to help. To be a man."

"You will, but for now we need to move. You've never had to face the other _things_ out here. We need to make it back before dark." I smile back at him, but it comes off harder than I mean. "Now, let's hurry."

**I'm hoping for daily updates, like a drabble piece, but a little wordier because I can't help myself. Expect short chapters if they come to me, maybe twice a day. It all depends on what's happening in my head at the time, LOL.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

I have a spot I call my own in this world. A dirty retreat on a grassy knoll overlooking the entrance to a once beautiful city. If you squint hard enough, you can still make out the "Welcome to Atlanta" sign. It's been two hundred years since it hung in the air, its bright white letters like pearls, reflecting in the sun, now stuck in the side of a broken sky scrapper.

It's broken now, like the people within the Sector. Peeling and faded from exposure. Rotting, yet still clinging to life. A constant reminder that this is who we are, this is all we have.

It's depressing to think about what the city once was. Bright lights and busy. Cars moving fast along the streets, people in a rush to get anywhere and everywhere. Maybe to work. To a family. A house with a yard, children playing and a dog barking as carefree laughter floated through the air.

A life.

Now, the buildings have been reduced to rubble, only parts of the structures remain. The windows are busted, the insides ravaged by looters long ago. Smoke still billows from some of the rooftops. Water sits inches deep on those once busy streets. Trees crack the pavement, and dangerous animals run wild through the neighborhoods. If you listen, you can hear the call of one wolf to another. The screams of a victim being beaten in the streets.

It's beautiful chaos and a living nightmare.

It's why I have my knoll. My small patch of dying grass. My oasis away from the danger.

I let them clean the deer tonight, trusting Emmett not to ruin the meat or the hide.

So I take my moment to unwind. To wrap my head around the day's events and sort my thoughts. I look at the sky, the moon shining down on my face, and I relax. I count to ten and think of the stars, where they would sit if we could still see them. I think about the sun, and how much closer it's become.

I let a single tear slip in my solitude and trace the craters on the moon. It's dark scars like open wounds.

"I knew I'd find you here." His voice puts a smile on my face.

"I was never good at hide and seek." I don't turn to look at him, instead, my fingers trace the faint glow of the milky way. "It's almost burnt completely out."

"Ten years you've been watching those things." He chuckles, standing over me and blocking the light of the moon.

"It's all that's left." It breaks my heart. "And you'd know far more about them, had you ever paid attention."

"Who says I wasn't?" He gives me a pointed stare, but we both know better. "You're never looking hard enough."

"Did you see the deer?" I say, changing the subject. I don't look for approval from my brother, not always, but I know jealousy will burn through him at the eight pointer and_ that_ I revel in.

He nods and lays beside me, his shoulder next to mine. "Since Eric's still alive, I'm guessing we can keep him?"

"You're much too excited about that." I laugh as he rubs his hands together. He's much more fond of the people we take in than me.

"And you're nervous."

"I don't like needles," I confess, but it's a lie and he knows better.

"Did you see any guards while you were out?"

I turn, finally looking into his eyes. A storm of grey that match my own. It's eerie sometimes, looking into eyes that mirror mine, but they hold all my secrets, my fears.

"Only a straggler."

Jasper nods, understanding my unspoken words. We've killed before. Many times over, and he knows, just like I do, when the other has taken a life. We don't get joy out those kills. Life means something to us, but we have to survive, and killing is part of that survival.

"Rosalie spotted Cullen in the city today."

I freeze, my hand digging into the dirt. "So he's back?"

"She said they're gathering a hunting party. Assembling more troops. Bargaining for the lives of the boys in the city. Using force."

"Those things they release aren't enough?" I spit, anger bubbling inside.

"We need to make plans in case they move out this far. I wanted to speak with you first before we addressed the group. Some have never had a run in with the sector soldiers." I want to call him out on his lie, but I hold my tongue, not wanting to fight. To taint the only bit of peace I have.

I'm the risk taker. The adrenaline junky. The one without fear, but disciplined.

Jasper is calculating, never taking chances. A born ruler, with a firm hand. He enjoys the battle as much as I do, but with plans and back ups. That's why I know he's thought of at least two plans before reaching me. He gives me the illusion that I have a choice, and I willingly give him the reins.

He takes his two minute big brother role seriously, and I let him. It's easier to be me that way, to survive and to keep the only family I have left firmly at my side.

"Eric needs to be trained as well as the others," I say, thinking of how much Eric struggled with that deer. He can lift, but most can. It's the journey that usually kills a man, and we can't spare any at this point in the game.

"Emmett can help with that."

"How long do you think we'll have this time?" We've been in the same place too long. I know that. But it's nice and I'm going to miss it.

"Three days? A week maybe? We have another place, though."

"I hate this. Someone should put him down already."

"He's not a risk to us, yet," Jasper says, but the words hold nothing more than the hot air from his mouth.

"Cullen is always a risk." My jaw clenches just thinking about him.

"Bells…" The warning in his voice makes me rolls my eyes and lift myself up.

I breath in. I count, and breath out.

"We should head back." I stand, but he won't let me go.

"Bella…" He tries to pull me down beside him, but my mind's made up.

"Tomorrow's a big day." I let my anger fade, pushing it into a closet and slamming the door until later. He's seen me angry plenty of times, but I'm too hungry and tired to argue about this with him tonight.

"We can stay here longer. Maybe howl at the moon."

I shake my head, laughing at his silliness. "I should have eaten you in the womb."

He stands, wiping his pants with one hand, his other still entwined with mine, his face filled with mock horror.

"You still scare me, you know that?"

**Are you enjoying the ride so far?**


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